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By Dennis Andrew S. Aguinaldo
THAT morning I remember, one
among those other Saturday mornings when I travel from the city to
Mauban, Quezon. As with the other Saturdays, I attempted to teach.
I recall my arrival, how the rays
of the sun danced with flights of dust from the school garden, from
the dry farms, and maybe also, some dust from where I came from. The
rays entered the room, and the dust danced on crisp yellowed
uniforms and freshly mothered hair.
I told a class of young
workshoppers—much younger than my regular city college
learners—the story of the six blind men and the elephant.
I told them how each of the blind
men knew its name was elephant. But how it was the first time they
would “see” it for themselves. So each one touched it, and each
one set a definition for the rest.
I told the children how,
according to the first, the elephant was a tree because he was
hugging the leg (like so); how the second countered that it was a
giant fan because he held between his praying palms the elephant’s
ear (this way, do you see?); and how the third, with as much
certainty as pride, said it was a snake and he had caught it, his
hands locked around the snout of the trunk. He left no quarter for
bite or venom.
More—how another blind man was
most confident, for his back rested on the elephant’s flank (like
so, and with folded arms), certain that whatever the elephant was,
it was a wall; how another caressed the tail (this way), glad to
know the elephant was a rope, yet also sad that he had no strength
(or eyes!) to whip the truth right into the heads of his companions;
and how the sixth blind man was silent.
Although the bickering of the
five buzzed in around his ears, the last man was focused on keeping
his hand pat on the point of the ivory trunk (here, careful but
firm, see? easing his body away from the point but refusing to take
his hands off it, for who knew the whim of who or whatever was
silent on the other end?) because only he understood the need for
vigilance against movement, only he felt need for all or any of his
senses to detect the slightest shudder.
I told the children how, of the
six, only that last man owned his blindness and therefore hated it:
for he stood at the meaning end of a poised spear!
I admit I then grew worried. I
was carried away. I thought I lost the students, that the lesson
reached levels impenetrable to them (despite my gestures). So I
stopped—held ground, so to speak—and fished for any hint of my
failure from their eyes. I tried to summoning another story, any
story, even if only obliquely apt.
Then a girl with curious pigtails
raised her hand (and that morning happened to me three years ago,
and it was yesterday when I gave up every form of teaching, and
today I remember – with all clarity and dust – how that hand
touched the yellow air between us as if it were a palpable mass from
which she could so breezily swing) and asked: “Is this elephant
alive or not?
“Do they know?”
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